Framingham faces 2019 deadline for Mary Dennison cleanup plans

Monday

FRAMINGHAM — State environmental officials have set a February 2019 deadline for the city to explain how it will clean up pollution at Mary Dennison Park.

The site, which spans roughly 15 acres along Beaver Street, was found to be contaminated with lead and other chemicals in 2014.

While the park is now considered safe, the city is crafting a plan to clean any remaining contaminants and build a new playground.

Briefing the City Council last week, representatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection said testing at Mary Dennison is nearly complete, setting the stage for the final cleanup. All that remains is for investigators to nail down the extent of landfill waste that exists on the periphery of the park, and determine whether it extends onto private properties, said Stephen Johnson, MassDEP’s deputy regional director for waste site cleanup.

The city and Avery Dennison Corporation — the other party responsible for the contamination — will then face a deadline next year to submit their final plans for the site.

“This is an opportunity to do a cleanup and a cap of the landfill material … that’s going to be considered a permanent solution,” Johnson said, “as well as create the new face of the park, if you will.”

Mary Dennison, a popular retreat for families on the Southside, is one of three polluted sites in the city that have drawn the attention of MassDEP. The state launched a new initiative several years ago to improve environmental conditions in South Framingham, where many of the city’s poorest residents live close to industrial sites.

Michael Hugo, vice chairman of the Board of Health, said while there are more than 500 sites with reportable environmental concerns in Framingham, three — Mary Dennison, the former Commonwealth Gas plant at 350 Irving St. and the former General Chemical site on Leland Street — are among the most concerning. The neighborhoods nearby are among the most racially diverse, and are home to many people who face language and economic barriers, Hugo said.

“One major point is that there are no easy fixes to what we’re doing,” Hugo said. “I know that people are impatient. I know that they want it done yesterday. We have to recognize that these toxic insults go back to the 1800s in one site, and the early 1900s in the other sites. There’s no easy fix and there’s no quick cleanup.”

State focuses on South Framingham

MassDEP launched an initiative several years ago to improve conditions in former industrial cities places like Lowell, Worcester, Springfield and Taunton. In Framingham, it looked at areas near Beaver Dam Brook in an effort to improve water quality. The state also wanted to ensure the numerous auto repair and auto body shops in South Framingham are properly disposing of hazardous waste, said Eric Worrall, MassDEP’s northeast regional director.

“Overall it was very well-received,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of followup from business owners who want to learn more about what they need to do to stay in compliance with our hazardous waste regulations.”

MassDEP also gave the city $157,000 in grant funding to clean up portions of Beaver Dam Brook, tapping money from a natural resources damage assessment claim filed previously against the former General Motors facility in south Framingham.

The state’s longer-term efforts are now focused on Mary Dennison and the two other contaminated sites.

Cleanup ahead at Mary Dennison

The park was used as a burn dump by the former Dennison Manufacturing Company from the mid-1920s through approximately 1947. The company also gave the town permission to dump municipal waste there.

Framingham then acquired the land in the 1960s and covered the remaining refuse. The park was built in stages in subsequent years, and now contains three ball fields, a soccer field, a volleyball court, basketball courts and two small playgrounds.

In 2014, in preparation for renovations at the park, testing showed high levels of lead and some other metals. The town closed off the eastern playground and soccer field with a chain link fence and in October 2015, crews treated the soil and removed topsoil contaminated with lead. Both areas were temporarily restored with clean soil and wood chips.

Since then, the town and Avery Dennison have funded substantial soil and groundwater testing. An overall cleanup plan may include capping and/or removal of soil. The City Council voted last month to ask Mayor Yvonne Spicer to allocate $500,000 for the project, though the cleanup is expected to cost more.

350 Irving St.

The site’s history as a gas manufacturing plant goes back to the 1880s. The company that operated the business generated waste oils and tars, only a portion of which could be reused or resold. Much of the material was dumped, buried or discharged on the back of the property, a former wetland.

Johnson said when manufactured gas plants were decommissioned, workers typically left everything below ground in place, and filled in sites with demolition debris. Such was the case in Framingham, where pipes and underground storage tanks were found.

Remediation has been ongoing since 2015. Johnson said Eversource, which now owns the property, has been working to meet the state’s cleanup requirements, but a “permanent solution” for the property will probably require activity and use limitations.

“This has a long history, a complicated history, a lot of subsurface infrastructure,” he said, “and it’s going to be a long time before we can get to a point where we feel that we have a permanent solution on that site.”

General Chemical

Facing pressure from the state and the city, General Chemical shuttered its hazardous waste management facility on Leland Street in 2012. MassDEP then executed a consent order with General Chemical and Trinity General, the landowner, which mandated remediation work.

General Chemical complied with the state’s orders until March 2017, but has since declared its intention to abandon the cleanup project. In response, the state seized $1.85 million the company had set aside for the work, though the actual cost is likely to be much higher.

Scrambling to find additional money, MassDEP staffers met with the EPA last year to see if the General Chemical property could be listed as a Superfund site — a designation that would bring more resources to bear. But federal officials said the site doesn’t score high enough to qualify.

Framingham and Sherborn are now pushing for a “thermal treatment” to clean up the pollution, removing it by heating up the ground. General Chemical has granted the state access to the site for two years, and a contractor and subcontractor recently evaluated the conditions. A report issued in January is now being finalized, with recommendations for remediation.

“We’re hoping … that we may be able to conduct cleanup actions this year, in the summer of 2018,” Worrall said.

MassDEP and the state attorney general are also investigating legal options to seize the assets of General Chemical and other corporate entities to pay for the cleanup. The state issued notices of responsibility and requests for information to General chemical, Trinity General, Clean Ventures, Allstate Power Vac and Cycle Chem, Inc, which Worrall said are believed to all have some affiliation with the parent company.

“We have also more recently issued 12 requests for information to companies that have transported waste to General Chemical,” Worrall said. Two others with a historic connection to General Chemical have also been contacted, he said.

Jim Haddadin can be reached at 617-863-7144 or jhaddadin@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimHaddadin